“I don’t mind at all.  Might I take your candle?”

“Of course,” said Lady Groombridge, “you won’t, don’t you know——­”

“Say that you sent me?” The low, detached voice betrayed no sarcasm.  She knew perfectly well that Lady Groombridge disliked being beholden to her at that moment.  It was rather amusing to make her so.

For fifteen minutes after that the travelling clock by Lady Rose’s bed ticked loudly, and drowned the faint murmur of her prayers while she knelt at the prie-dieu.

Lady Groombridge knew Rose too well to be surprised.  But she did not, like the young widow, pass the time in prayer; she was worried—­even deeply so.  She was of an anxious temperament, and she was really shocked at what had happened.

Molly did not come back with any air of mystery, but with a curiously negative look.

“Thirty-five pounds,” she said very quietly.

Lady Groombridge sat up, very wide awake.

“More than half his allowance for a whole year,” she said with conviction.

“Oh dear, dear,” said Lady Rose, rising as gracefully as a guardian angel from her prie-dieu.

Molly made no comment, although in her heart she was very angry with Mrs. Delaport Green.  Her quick “Good-night” was very cordially returned by the other two.

“Now tell me something more about Miss Molly Dexter,” said Rose, sinking on to a tiny footstool at Lady Groombridge’s feet as soon as they were alone.

“I am ashamed to say that I know very little about her; I am simply furious with myself for having asked them at all.  I don’t often yield to kind-hearted impulses, and I’m sure I’m punished enough this time.”

Lady Groombridge gave a snort.

“But who is she?  Is she one of the Malcot Dexters?”

“Yes; I can tell you that much.  She is the daughter of a John Dexter I used to know a little.  He died many years ago, not very long after divorcing his wife, and this poor girl was brought up by an aunt, and Sir Edmund says she had a bad time of it.  Then she made one of those odd arrangements people make nowadays, to be taken about by this Mrs. Delaport Green, and I met them at Aunt Emily’s, and, of course, I thought they were all right and asked them to come here.  After that I heard a little more about the girl from some one in London; I can’t remember who it was now.”

“Poor thing,” said Rose; “she looks as if she had had a sad childhood.  But what curious eyes; I find her looking through and through me.”

“Yes; you have evidently got a marked attraction for her.”

“Repulsion, I should have called it,” said Rose, with her gentle laugh.

Lady Groombridge laughed too, and got up to go to bed.

“And what became of the mother?”

“She is living—­” said the other; then she caught her sleeve in the table very clumsily, and was a moment or two disengaging the lace.  “She is living,” she then said rather slowly, “in Paris, I think it is, but this girl has never seen her.”